I’ve been a fan of Julia Holter for a long time¹. She occasionally creates moments that irritate me, but I kind of love her all the more for them.

This album only has a couple such moments. (With Aviary it was like the whole album. Need to listen to it again and see if that’s still the case. I’d pre-ordered that vinyl and didn’t get into it that much but felt like I should only listen to it on vinyl, loudly, when no one else was home, which is only like once or twice a year.) I should read and write more about this album. Or just listen to it a bunch more. That won’t be hard, I’m already doing that. And get it on vinyl. And listen to all her old stuff again. And. And. And.

Standalone post link: Listening Log: Something in the Room She Moves

Random serendipitous connection to two other books I was reading-

1. I Love Information references these, which is why I looked them up.
2. This apparent first translation of the elegies into English was made by V. Sackville-West, to whom Orlando is dedicated, and who appears as Orlando in some of the photographs in the book. (There’s a lot more to possibly say about her connection to Virginia Woolf and Orlando, but I’ll leave it at that.)

Standalone post link: Reading Log: Duineser Elegien - Elegies from the castle of Duino

this is lowkey nonspeculative horror, I have a lot more to say about it but not at the moment

I meant to write a review of this for Granite Media but haven’t yet for reasons.

Past Log Updates

DATE :

Resources

Standalone post link: Reading Log: Ariel Crashes a Train

I track my music listening pretty exhaustively using last.fm, and have about six full years of history there. This is a place for me to manually highlight particular listening projects or obsessions of the moment.

Not sure how retroactive I can be - weird, but I might go back roughly to the beginning of 2024 or even the end of 2023 to make sure I cover some key repeats or personally meaningful listens.

Standalone post link: My 2024 Listening Log

Now

• bought a new-to-me car a few weeks ago and I’m really enjoying it +

  2020 Subaru Forester Sport, dark gray, orange detailing, black wheels with chunky all-terrain tires, and moderate acne from having been in a Texas hailstorm (saving me possibly $8-10 grand?)

• at work, keeping up with Sora collection development +

  new releases, renewals, keeping the hold ratios down

• also at work, cleaning up the catalog +

  fixing book series, building out records, which is a satisfying practice in the moment but feels possibly fruitless afterwards when having worked on it for an extended amount of time - like playing a video game? An arcane MARC record video game.

• getting ready to do a presentation at UCET+UELMA 2024: Cataloging Tips for Busy Librarians +

  which is super boring and nerdy, even for a library and edtech conference, but maybe useful? I was about to cancel out of anxiety, embarrassment, and laziness and not go to the conference, but when I saw 84 people had expressed interest in attending in the Sched app so far, and there just aren’t that many offerings for librarians, I realized I couldn’t flake out quietly.

• still trying to establish a sustained writing and learning practice in my “thoughtgarden" +

  what I call my Obsidian vault instead of a “digital garden” now, because its digital-ness is not the most essential thing about it)

• trying to re-establish a personal sharing and curation practice on this website +

  and likewise re-establish a professional sharing and curation practice with work colleagues

Next

• thinking about getting some gardening going
• thinking about going off on some kind of overlanding-ish adventure in my new car
• building out this website again
• reading a bunch of books, watching a bunch of movies

This page was last updated on March 17, 2024. See my prior ‘now’ updates here.

Credit for the ‘now’ page concept goes to Derek Sivers. I tend to get aspirational when I update it, so I’ve decided to embrace that by calling it ‘now and next.’

Standalone post link: Now and Next (March 15, 2024)

After listening to Nothing Feels Good a couple of times, I was ready to do a deep dive back into midwest emo. Frame and Canvas is my other favorite album from this era, but I’d seen this playlist a while ago and thought I should branch out. It’s pretty great, and has some nice surprises

like an ATCQ track from that period, and the realization that Third Eye Blind actually kind of fits in with this music. I’ve now added a bunch of albums from this era to my library to listen to; a lot of them I had read about or seen in catalogs back in the day, but didn’t have the money to buy them, library didn’t have them, couldn’t find them on file sharing, had no friends into this kind of music, etc. Had no friends, basically, hence this kind of music?

Standalone post link: Listening Log: Braid 1998 Van Mixtape

For some reason my annual springtime Jay Som listen made me think of this album and 90s midwest emo in general, and I’m so glad I dug it out and listened to it. Somehow in the late 90s a track from this album got airplay on X-96 one evening in between “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” and “Loser” or whatever they were usually playing and still I think play 25 years later, and I happened to hear it. It stuck with me; I remembered the band name and that I liked it through two years of Mormon mission, but didn’t find or hear the album until college, when I was in the Graywhale by the University of Utah and found a section I’d never paid attention to with the strange-to-me label of “indie”, and there in that section was this album, with it’s ironic retro colorfulness and white CD case backing. This album was my conscious entry point to the world of “indie rock”, emo, Pitchfork, etc.

Standalone post link: Listening Log: Nothing Feels Good

Test:

1. If this note appears, I’ve figured out how to post a note to my website (static website run through Hugo/Github/Netlify) just by creating a note in my Obsidian vault. Cool.

2. If this note also appears, I’ve further figured out how to edit the Obsidian note to have it push an update to the website post.

3. If this third note appears, I’ve successfully done an update via Obsidian on my phone, and I now finally have an easy way to post quick notes to my static website from my phone. Neato burrito.

I guess I’ll have to put together documentation and credits for all of this now.

Not sure why the “last updated” timestamp says tomorrow, though. Have to figure that out.

Thanks for reading!

Standalone post link: Posting to my website from an Obsidian note?

Listening to a lot of Jay Som is a springtime tradition for me.

Standalone post link: Listening Log: Everybody Works / Turn Into / Anak Ko / various singles

I can
do
whatever
I
want
here

Last December I opened a fresh notebook and started with this entry. It is kind of my current thesis statement for having a website, being on the internet, trying to make stuff, etc. I haven’t followed through with these ideas so far, but I feel like putting it up on the website is a start.

(A text transcription follows the notebook scan images.)

I can
do
whatever
I
want
here

[sketch¹ - self-portrait of sorts, though no beard]

I should probably remember or remind myself that I met Gin² because I wrote a blog about random stuff I was interested in

I’ve been so jaded but creating and sharing stuff on the internet is maybe probably still a worthwhile endeavor

notice I didn’t say “social media”
but I kind of mean social media but also not
media that can be social?
media that can build connection, understanding, community?
isn’t that all good media? digital or analog? art? do I mean art?

I think maybe what I really mean
by all of this
is
art?

Going to let that sit here and see how it feels in the coming days

creating things and sharing things

to

express myself
have fun / play around with
words
ink
pixels
code
images
video
sounds
connect with other people
make and do interesting things
learn stuff
make the world better somehow? (too much to ask)
“generalist”

art basically
or being human
in a good way
“the humanities”

[it is well]
[the evening and the morning
were the first day]
[light] [salt]
[life] [death]
[growth] [decay]
[seeds] [trees]
[air] [breath] [vacuum]
[nebula] [supernova]
[creation through destruction]³⁴

2023-12-17 after 11:30pm

Notes

Standalone post link: I Can Do Whatever I Want Here